Imperator: Rome, the sequel to Europa Universalis: Rome, has been having a tough time. Since its launch in April, fans have taken the game to task for having some unfulfilling mechanics, unfair opponents, and a monarch power system that’s been derisively nicknamed “mana” due to the way it magically works. It’s the only Paradox Interactive grand strategy game with a negative average of user ratings on Steam. While the game’s initial sales exceeded the developer’s expectations, the player response has been disappointing. So much so, that the roadmap Paradox published includes multiple steps to get back on course. In a new interview with PC Gamer, designer Johan Andersson revealed how he took the criticism to heart.
“I don’t understand why people want to buy a game that has major core features that they don’t like. Well, if the customers want something different, we’ll just have to change the game to do that.”
The first big improvement update For Imperator: Rome comes on June 26th. It will revamp naval action to give fleets more to do.
Bungie is revamping the in-game store for Destiny 2. The Eververse, as it’s called, has always been a source of controversy for players, but Bungie hopes the upcoming changes will elevate it into more of a revenue generator. First, all Eververse armor will become Universal Ornaments, meaning they’ll be turned into purely cosmetic bits that can be applied to any legendary armor. You’ll get the spiffy new helm look, but keep all the underlying buffs and stats. Second, Bright Dust is changing from a currency to a reward. You’ll earn it for finishing bounties, and once you complete your weekly bounties Bungie will give you other ways to earn more. Finally, Eververse loot will no longer dismantle into Bright Dust. Breaking up that junk will give you Legendary Shards and Glimmer, which you’ll be able to spend in exchange for Collections. I’m sure all this means something to Destiny players, but it’s Foozles and Whatzits to me.
The changeover will happen on September 17th, so Bungie recommends that if you’re sitting on a pile of stuff to dismantle, you should do it before the update to maximize your Bright Dust payout. Coincidentally (or not) the PC version of Destiny 2 will be moving from Activision Blizzard’s Battlenet to Steam around that same time.
If Star Wars fans know one thing, it’s that lightsabers are for cutting off arms. Limbs are always getting lopped off in the films. Threaten a Jedi with a gun and you’ll likely earn a quick visit to the bacta tank and get a robo-hand grafted on for your trouble. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the upcoming game from Respawn and Electronic Arts, bucks that trend. Speaking to IGN, senior designer Justin Perez revealed that Disney and Lucasfilm have rules against dismemberment for their licencees. It’s fine for robots and animals, but people and humanoid aliens cannot be de-limbed, at least, not by the player. Oddly, decapitation is allowed in certain dramatic instances, but you can’t show the cut or blood. Think back to the scene of Jango Fett’s end in Episode II and you’ll get the idea. Point your gun at Jedi with impunity – as long as you’re not in an actual movie.
Settle down, people. We know you’re all excited that Keanu Reeves is playing Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, but the real E3 story is how you’ll call your transportation in the game. Speaking to VG247, lead quest designer Pawel Sasko revealed that in the world of Cyberpunk, the artificial intelligence in your neon car or neon motorcycle responds to your call like Roach in The Witcher 3.
“You can see as your motorcycle arrives, you can see as your car arrives. So you can just leave it wherever you want, it can go somewhere, just call it, and AI makes it like ‘bzzt!’, he drives by and waits for you.”
Will your chrome and samurai-armored sedan climb up on the roof of a cottage, like the ever awkward Roach was sometimes known to do? Will your bladed crotch rocket trample your enemies, or buck you off on a whim? These are questions Keanu Reeves has probably not had to consider.
Google’s Area 120, an idea incubator that’s had some hits and misses, has released Game Builder for free. It’s a simple, easy-to-use game that teaches basic logic and code concepts, while giving players the tools to build their own 3D games. It uses a card-based visual language to ease players into programming behaviors and actions, but more ambitious tinkerers can dive into the JavaScript functionality to make their own virtual code cards.
Game Builder has been out on Steam early access as something of a stealth release since November. Area 120 only publicized the game today.
Going by the E3 gameplay reveal, you could be forgiven for thinking Watch Dogs Legion largely eschews the non-lethal combat options the previous game encouraged. While there is something to be said for a retired assassin grandmother shooting enemies in the face like John Wick, it appeared like Legion was trying to up the ante on hyperstylized violence. According to creative director Clint Hocking, that impression is wrong.
“We really wanted to make sure that non-lethal was an option in any combat encounter.”
Speaking to Twinfinite, Hocking assured fans of the last installment’s stun guns and monkey fist knockouts that Legion can be played in a relatively non-lethal way. While Hocking was unable to confirm the possibility of a 100% kill-free play-through, he did say that half of the game’s current arsenal for the player is non-lethal. Grannies can still shoot to kill, of course, and the player’s enemies will pull out guns if you do or if you violate a high-security area.
Romero Games, the company founded by John and Brenda Romero, announced Empire of Sin. It’s a turn-based strategy game published by Paradox Interactive. Empire of Sin is set in Prohibition-era Chicago and puts players in the strategic pin-striped suit of one of 14 mob bosses. Fight your rivals using your crew of hard-boiled button men and take over territory speakeasy by speakeasy.
Empire of Sin launches on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC in the spring of 2020. Use that time to brush up on your mob patter.
Fallout 76 is getting there. After its rough launch, Bethesda’s developers have kept their noses to the grindstone and continued to work on improving the game. Here, then, is the biggest news for Fallout 76 that came out of Bethesda’s E3 2019 briefing. People – actual human NPCs – are coming to the game. The Wastelander update launching later this year will add those bipedal dialog boxes that have been missing all this time.
In related news, Bethesda has added a battle royale mode to Fallout 76. You can check it out right now while the game is free for everyone to try for the week.
The current rage in the game industry seems to be coming out with a strong message denying any political stance at all. Have a game about heavily armed special police forces fighting terrorists and criminals? It doesn’t mean anything. Made a game about a doomsday religious cult taking over Montana just before World War 3? Don’t read into it. Publishing a game about the modern surveillance state and privacy violations along with some slick commentary about Bay Area gentrification? Hey, that’s your opinion, man. And if anyone gets the wrong idea, you’d better publish a statement correcting that notion. You’re not apolitical, you’re just presenting a rich smorgasbord of viewpoints and systems and letting the player decide.
“We are scared sometimes as we are world-building. That was the case for Far Cry 5. It is a great game, but it just wasn’t possible to present all points of view and perspectives. We believe that ultimately, in the future, players should be able to go in the game world, have as many different experiences as they want, experience as many different political views as they want, as many religions as they want … as many different fantasies as they want.”
We get it Ubisoft. You don’t want to condemn or advocate any opinion that might offend some sector of your fans. You’re completely neutral.
Wilhelm Franke, besides being a generic-sounding German name, was a real-life resistance fighter in Dresden during World War 2. Franke held antifascist meetings in the cigar store he owned, spoke openly about defying Nazism, and was a serious enough distraction that he was arrested by the Gestapo and died in February 1945. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts created an “elite” German avatar for Battlefield V with the same name. As shown in the image above, he’s the Hugo Boss uniformed gent with the Luger and the Phantom of the Opera mask shooting people in a church. The cosmetic skin having the same moniker as an anti-Nazi agitator is likely a coincidence. While Franke has a street named after him in Dresden, he’s not a well-known figure outside of Germany. Still, people noticed and informed EA that maybe they should pick a different name for their made-up villain.
Here’s where things go sideways thanks to how modern marketing messaging interacts with sensitive topics like Nazis. EA agreed that the name of the skin needs to be changed, but they denied their theatrical villain is a Nazi. In a statement to Vice, EA emphasized the character’s non-Nazi status. In fact, they doubled down and called out how not political their WW2 game is overall.
“The aforementioned Elite, Wilhelm Franke, whose name we’re changing is not a Nazi, but a German solider similar to ones we already have in the game. In Battlefield V, we’re not making any political statements in relation to the real life events of WW2 and there are no swastikas in the game.”
To claim your WW2 game is apolitical takes some brass. To further hold up a lack of swastikas as evidence of that neutrality is some hardcore public relations doublespeak.
Say “Ikea” and most people think of reasonably priced flat-packed furniture with goofy names. Stuff like Ektorp sofas, Skubb storage boxes, and Malm dressers may be ubiquitous in young peoples’ apartments, but thus far the Swedish company hasn’t delved into Razer’s gamer space. Ikea wants some of that sweet gamer gear market now. They’ve partnered with 3D printing company Unyq, to make custom-fit gear like wrist braces, textured key caps, and a mouse cord organizer. The Uppkoppla line of accessories will eventually have more items (prototypes of chairs and desks are being tested) and the items will be available starting in 2020.
Despite the widely lauded story and player choice in Fallout: New Vegas, the ending was a disappointment. Siding with Caesar, House, Yes Man, the New California Republic, or doing your own thing got you a slideshow of narrated results and dumped into the end credits. That was it. You couldn’t even continue wandering the wastes for random adventuring. It was doubly perplexing because a similar ending in the original Fallout 3 was soundly criticized and later updated to allow gaming past the main quest’s finish. How did Obsidian drop the ball with New Vegas?
Chris Avellone admitted to Eurogamer that it was a missed opportunity. The studio originally planned to have post-story content, but they just ran out of development time. It wasn’t going to be anything fancy, but the player would’ve been able to go on walkabout and some NPCs would even comment on the character’s choices. The threat of adding more bugs to an already error-prone game, and the prospect of wasting resources on something that might not even matter to players was a significant roadblock. The idea of adding this feature with one of the DLC packs was suggested, but the plan was ultimately shot down.
“I even offered to pay for one of the milestones myself to allow for additional polish time on existing content, but that was refused because they didn’t want to extend the release date for the DLCs.”
Thus static images, narration, then credits. But there’s something to be said for having an actual ending, rather than anticlimactic aimless exploring, followed by ennui. Always leave’em wanting more!
Microsoft is relaunching the IntelliMouse as a gaming peripheral. When the first IntelliMouse appeared in 1996, PC users lauded its clean lines, ergonomics, and introduction of the scroll wheel. It quickly became the standard by which other mice were compared. In 1999, it became one of the first commercially available optical mice thanks to “IntelliEye” technology. Throughout the years, Microsoft has sold the venerable mouse to hardcore fans, but now they are offering a jazzy gaming version.
In a nod to modern gaming, there are subtle design updates inspired by the shadow and gradients that are popular on Xbox accessories.
For many old school gamers, Quake II’s colored lighting was their introduction to to the pixel-pushing power of a dedicated graphics card. The reds were so red and the greens were so green! Did you see the way the yellow blaster shots went down the darkened hallway? On June 6th, Quake II may become another common touchstone when Nvidia releases an update that supports raytracing for the game. They’re even releasing a three-act shareware file (ask your parents about this if you don’t know) for everyone to sample.
While this isn’t the first game with raytracing, nor even the first version of Quake II supporting it, this marks the first official effort from a graphics card manufacturer done in cooperation with id Software. The source code will be released on June 6th as well, so modders can go nuts.
General Mills has officially adopted Chex Quest 3. The fan-made sequel, originally released in 2008, is being re-released by General Mills and folded into the Chex Mix brand’s family of licensed products. It’s a feather in the cap for Charles Jacobi, the creator of Chex Quest 3. He had worked on the original two games as an artist, then made the unofficial third game as a passion project.
To celebrate the event, General Mills posted the video above detailing some of the history of the quirky little freebie that came in cereal boxes in 1996 and wound up with a cult following. But that’s not all! Charles Jacobi is also working on Chex Quest HD, a fancy hi-res version of the saga for newer gamers that may not appreciate the Doom engine’s chunky pixels.
